we gazed in the heavenly blue
we noticed that populousness is bluer:
roofs fences
cars
heavy colours like a waterproof tarp
no one from our family
has been in these lands
since nineteen sixteen
glare of white handkerchiefs
spread wide
on the uncharted waters
non op posing
non meta morph osing
non harvest table
non stop able
*
life, you are a gash in need of stitching
death, you are a crust that yearns for filling
*
those who carry in their mouths, at first with care, heads with seeing eyes
those who touched newspaper print in their heads, as mother said never to do, never, wash your hands
those who rip apart in flight, carrying from nest to nest, smearing on the glass
attempt to mount the blunt-snouted body on a set of wheels,
set it trundling, throat outstretched and spouting fire
yes, them and these, too
but actually more these
for them conscripts spread their green arms wide
like a tablecloth plentifully spread
lie heaped at their feet like birch logs
to please the valkyries
at the harpies’ hearts desire
to the bayan’s thrum
the accordion’s reveille
and o, those children’s voices, singing where once there was a dome
in the soiled field
surrounded by corn and scarecrows
*
not on the earth but above or below
war’s deep grunt
producing slimy rivers of sweat
its hand feels for the gut
and we stagger
carry ourselves through the darkness
and mother demeter mithering in the muck
and anguish of the fields
hears from below: mother fuck
yet the sky might be brightening, or so it feels
and mother hecate comes out for a smoke
from the back street
from the foul black streets from the pecking fowl
the puddles of spilt milk
the earth lying like a kitbag
behind enemy lines give it tongue
mother mary hurries
but hasn’t yet come
*
in a great and strong wind
a still small voice
she who cradles leviathan in her hands like the infant
and she who rises above the rye
all are present for this, as it happens
they watch, they steadily
unspeaking
as the ice in the ice house and the tear in the bottle come of age
as the soil tastes the first weight of the rain
as the ice-stoves send out blocks of
smoking death
in the big brother house a fight opens like a flower
women in flip-flops
fixated
shut the fuck up why don’t
spring in the recruiting office
knee jerk, stethoscope down the spine
picking out the shaggy the short-legged the sinewy
under matron’s watchful eye
how the thick plaits of herring stream away
the lines of tanks on bridges flash in the sun
a waiter’s flourish reveals a pitiful morsel
shivering, drizzled in salt, underdone
and over there is everything that I kiss from afar
that I love to smithereens
all of it still shouting alleluia
but no respite from the shameful dream
serpents and all deeps
tin soldiers at the city walls
all the ranks of angels
nanny lena digging vegetables
snow like wool and hoarfrost like ashes
throat like spindrift, legs like a foal
heart thrust through the noose
like a button through a button hole
save us from the right hand of falsehood
a memory
won’t save us
lies in the ashes
biting its own tail
he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man
nor the strength of a horse
*
like the tailor who sews
not the straitjacket
(which from childhood has begged to sit up
woken from the canvas)
but the pattern
cuts on the bias
and the dress isn’t tight
just itchy
like a court proceeding
down the long hospital corridor
with a heavy trolley
handing out the tightly wrapped packages
the little living weights of verdicts
three per cord, ladies
like when in a moment’s confusion you spit out a barbed word
and it lodges in a treebody
or the body of a comrade
or a friendlip
and the line
goes taut
fish hooks a fish
like a mound
under a snowdrift
means nothing
writing on a tomb
sees no one
writing on a stone
nothing, we read
it not
but it is
2015
FROM Kireevsky
(2012)
from Girls, Singing
*
Young aeronauts, floating to land
From under the gentle maternal wing
Of the heavens, leading by the arm
An injured airman, met by their mothers
And alongside, on the vapour streams
Rides a cripple on his wheels
In a gilded shirt made of tears.
The aeronauts crowd round the cripple
They know themselves in him
And bring their mothers to greet him
And give him bread and wine
Around his trolley they drape a wreath
Of buttercups, memorise his face
And their thrilled tears fall
Then slowly, slowly they tiptoe away
In sadness for their own youth.
*
In the white white sky
Where cold space dilates,
Wretched of the earth,
He rose, and sold his fate.
Take it if you want it
Invest all your bonds
In the ramshackle, the matchwood
Of my once-used hands.
I have no body now
Stamped skew on the page
You can see the blue hills
Through my rib cage.
With the rising of the moon
With the wearing of the rain
I bobbed in the steppe
Like a boat on a chain.
I’m hail, its advancing stutter
A movement sans legs, sans hooves
Come buy my life-clutter.
But give back the life I used.
This posthumous glory
I’d give it up in ten
(It swells like the dropsy)
For a fag like we smoked back then.
*
Mother and Father didn’t know him,
Nor his young bride
When the captain returned
From beneath the bruised ice
Somewhere they’re toasting victory
The piano plays quick and then slow
He dragged the tail end of winter
Left circles in the snow.
A bulb is alight in the Office
But the residents’ list is blank
Outside the expanse is throbbing
Battalions of dead in a flank
Everything’s on fire, he said
Where I was, everywhere I look
Lentils boiled up in the pan, he said,
With the empty spine of a book
No boats came into harbour
Only a whistle reached land
Now the submariner grieves
For a signaller who blew on his hands
My gut is weighty with water
I’m a fearsome frozen thing
So many tank turrets entangled
In the fine net of Spring
I put on the spare wheel
Burned papers, destroyed every trace
Allow me to register as resident
And pass to my dwelling place
But the courtroom is silent
His papers lie crushed in the ice
And I’ll never get to witness
Him standing – a stranger to his wife.
*
What is that sweeper, mother,
Who lives on the cellar floor?
His name shivers and splinters
I don’t remember it anymore.
He barely comes out to the yard,
Wretched man in his underground room,
To chip at the moaning ice
To scrape with a broom
When I dress for work in the morning
And leave the house at dawn
Or when I undress in the evening
And place my shoes in a drawer